


Gardening Discipline

by Dedicate Kiwicrocus (cranky__crocus)



Series: SMACKDOWN '11 Round Two - Team Discipline [1]
Category: Emelan - Tamora Pierce
Genre: F/F, Goldenlake, smackdown
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-21
Updated: 2011-05-21
Packaged: 2017-10-19 16:08:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/202709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cranky__crocus/pseuds/Dedicate%20Kiwicrocus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Moonstream joined their grinning. “Gardening, you say? Perhaps I will just have to try.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gardening Discipline

**Author's Note:**

> Written for SMACKDOWN at Goldenlake: fiefgoldenlake.proboards.com
> 
> Hope you like it! ♥

            Their first kiss wasn’t planned—at least if months of unresolved sexual and romantic tension could not replace a simple whispered plea of ‘kiss me.’ In fact, had they planned the kiss, it would probably have come at _any_ other time.

            Rosethorn had been ranting about Crane, as she tended to do after a Temple-wide service. She paced the kitchen of Discipline, which was still new enough to both of them—and to regular cleaning—that her path on the floor made little noticeable mess despite her muddy shoes.

            “Inconsiderate! There was no reason to embrace me following service; there could have been a cucumber beneath his habit. Might as well have some aspect of his ego remain beneath his clothes, at least, given his relentless campaign for First Dedicate!” Rosethorn halted to take a deep breath before resuming her pacing and torrent of angry accusations. “Well he can keep his pickled cucumber in his grotesque greenhouse until it rots like his tomatoes.”

            Rosethorn crossed her arms. Lark bit her lip on laughter; she looked to her friend, eyebrow rising steadily over the jollity writ in her eyes.

            “ _What?_ ” Rosethorn inquired, all hot air and peevishness.

            Lark bit her lip harder and shook her head.

            “So tell me, Lark, or I will nail you to the chimney by your tongue!”

            Lark outright laughed, allowing her tongue to loll out to one side as she did so, mocking Rosethorn with the peeking appendage. “Sounds to _me_ that part of you still wants his…cucumber. Pickled, glassed, or not.”

            “The audacity—! By Green Man’s rage, I—Lark, you gnat!” Rosethorn halted and turned, hands on her hips and the heat of a forge emanating from her narrowed eyes. She stepped toward her companion with emotions morphing her features faster than they could be read.

            Lark simply watched, unconcerned and safe despite Rosethorn’s rage; Lark knew it was not truly directed at her. She had lived with an endless stream of tumblers, dancers, acrobats, and performers of all trades; Lark was not new to displays of emotion bordering on melodramatic—or indeed just that.

            Rosethorn took a step, and another, and a third before she breathed out.

            “He’s a prick,” she announced, glaring, before uttering her next words with great precision: “and I don’t _want_ it.”

            She reached Lark and placed a square hand over the front of her habit above the chest, clenching it into a fist. Rosethorn pulled the woman up and placed her other hand on the woman’s waist, the cotton cloth especially eager to indent under her fingertips.

            Lark’s face was mostly serious, with just that reserve of near-ceaseless mirth she carried in her eyes in and the wrinkles framing her eyelids and lips.

            Her lips. Rosethorn could see the twitch of joy there, because she was watching Lark’s lips. She stared as she removed the hand from Lark’s habit and wrapped it over her shoulders.

            “I don’t,” Rosethorn whispered as she drew closer, glancing between Lark’s lips and eyes, “want Crane”—Rosethorn could feel Lark’s breath—“because”—their noses touched—“I want _you_.”

            Rosethorn captured Lark’s lips in a kiss, brief and brushing until she was unable to stop herself. She wove her fingers into Lark’s curls and allowed the ecstasy of their closeness to disperse throughout her body. When Lark enveloped her in long lean arms and moaned, Rosethorn felt the energy gather beneath the skirts of her habit, where Crane’s cucumber would be…

            She laughed against Lark’s lips, pecked them once more, and touched their foreheads together as she chuckled.

            “I expect peculiar responses from you, Rosie,” Lark murmured as she stroked her fingers over the woman’s hip, “and I have a propensity for laughter, but I must wonder what prompted it. I hope not the kiss…?”

            “It’s not the kiss,” Rosethorn assured immediately, kissing the corner of Lark’s lips once more to prove it. “I just…well, if Crane has a cucumber, surely I have a tomato for you.”

            Rosethorn shivered at the feel of Lark’s laughter against her, from the air through her lips to the movement of her fine-tuned body: it was all electric to Rosethorn, who had yearned to feel it for months—years—and finally felt it as she wished.

            “Shall we go gardening, then?” Lark whispered, the smile evident in her eyes, lips and voice at once; Rosethorn’s toes danced in delight. “Or would you prefer to wait?”

            “Lark,” Rosethorn started, wrapping her second arm around Lark’s neck and touching their noses together again, “When have I _ever_ been known for patience?”

            “Gardening it is.”

            Their second kiss was longer, with wandering hands, and they never made it from the room. Their habits needed double the scrubbing time after rolling about on the kitchen floor of Discipline Cottage. At least after that, the two seemed to feel they had broken the place in properly, and within the week most floors and surfaces were clean.

            Honoured Moonstream called upon them and appraised the place with an approving nod. “You two look joyous. How did you manage the cleaning so quickly? You didn’t request a single novice…”

            “We just—” Lark began.

            “Gardening,” Rosethorn interrupted, grinning over her tea as she draped her leg on Lark’s beneath the table. “The house became my garden. You know I can’t stand for a garden untamed.”

            Lark’s cheeks grew rosier, but she smiled and nodded. “Rosethorn is unstoppable with a garden to manage. I treated it more as thread-work—all in the fingers and details.”

            Rosethorn nearly spat out her tea. She coughed; Lark gave her a smack on the back unprompted. They were grinning.

            Moonstream reflected their grins. “Gardening, you say? Perhaps I will just have to try.”

            “We suggest you do,” Lark agreed, catching Rosethorn’s eye to find the woman nodding. “Excellent exercise, gentle enough for my condition…”

            “And Niko’s about now,” Rosethorn prompted, smirking.

            Moonstream laughed and… _winked_.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! (:


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